In Which She Was Ten for Three Years
by Tajjas
Summary: Sixteen birthdays in Claudia's life, mostly pre-Warehouse.
1. She Was Five

**In Which She Was Ten for Three Years  
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_Fifteen birthdays in Claudia's life, including my own (slightly warped) explanation for Claudia's inconsistent age since she's 19 if you believe what she said in "MacPherson" or 22 if you believe Joshua's comment about her not knowing how to be ten plus him being trapped for 12 years in "Claudia."_

Warehouse 13_ isn't mine. Please try to contain your shock._

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><p><strong>She was five (but really seventeen), and she wanted her mommy and daddy.<strong>

"Well, what do you think?" Joshua asked.

"It's very nice. Thank you." It was a nice, fluffy blanket, that was true, but Mommy and Daddy would have known that her favorite color was purple, not pink, and she liked kitties better than puppies.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes." She tried to smile. It wasn't Joshua's fault that Mommy and Daddy were gone. She'd heard those ladies talking at the funeral, when they hadn't known she was hiding under the food table, and it was all because of some stupid patch of ice on the road. But just because it wasn't his fault didn't mean that she didn't want them here.

"It's too big for your cot," he said, obviously forcing himself to smile as well, "but I know you don't like sleeping on that anyway. And I promise, as soon as the undergrads clear out for the summer and there are some decent apartments available for rent, we'll find someplace nicer where you can have your own room. Maybe near a park. You'd like that, right?"

"Why can't we live at home?" She liked her room _there_.

"I…you know why, Claudia, we talked about this. I have to finish school, and it's just too far away." He shook his head. "It's getting late, how about we have some cake and then I'll read you a story before bedtime."

She nodded reluctantly, and he pushed himself up from the couch and took the three steps necessary to reach undersized refrigerator, pulling out a package stamped with the logo from the grocery store down the street. "I got double chocolate, and I bet now that you're five, you can manage a really _big_ piece."

She put the blanket aside, with the tub of legos and the two books he'd given her, and slid down off the couch to join him. "I'm not five."

"What?" He looked down at her. "No, I'm pretty sure you're five. You don't still want to be four, do you? If you're four, you won't be able to start kindergarten this fall."

She shook her head. "I'm not four either. I took the test, and it said I'm seventeen and young at heart."

He snorted and dug a knife out of the silverware drawer. "You're not young at heart, you're just young. What test was this, anyway?"

"I don't know. It was in the magazine." She leaned against the counter and stared at the cake. She didn't think her stomach really felt hungry, but it did look pretty good...

"Grab spoons for us, would you? And what magazine are you talking about? Was it one of Mrs. Thom's?" He looked down at the slices of cake and frowned. "Oh, do you want ice cream with your cake?"

What kind of question was _that_? Who didn't want ice cream with cake? "_Yes_." She pulled out two spoons as he'd asked and then climbed up into her chair at the table. "It wasn't Mrs. Thom's." Claudia stayed with her while Joshua was in school, and while she was nice for an old lady—although she did smell kind of funny sometimes—all the magazines and books she had were about plants and paintings. Not very interesting, especially since she wouldn't let Claudia color in them or cut out any of the pretty pictures. "It was on the table beside your professor's office when you went to talk to him yesterday." She'd been lucky to find it; Joshua _always_ took longer talking to his professors than he said he was going to, and while she'd remembered her coloring book, she'd forgotten her crayons. "There was another quiz about staducing people, but that one had stupid questions and the answers didn't make any sense."

"Stad—seducing people?" Joshua almost dropped a scoop of ice cream destined for one of the pieces of chocolate cake onto the floor, and she scowled.

"Be careful!"

"Claude, you shouldn't be reading stuff like that. You're _five_."

"No, I'm seventeen."

"Five. Magazine quizzes aren't exactly well known for their accuracy."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "No. I want to be seventeen."

"Fine, we'll split the difference and say you're ten." He dug out another scoop of ice cream and dumped it on the second plate before putting the tub of ice cream away. "But you still shouldn't be reading things like that. Next time read your own book while you're waiting for me, okay?"

She frowned. She'd already read all her own books—except the two new ones, and she'd read them soon too—and anyway, her books didn't have quizzes like that. Besides…she counted on her fingers quickly and then glared at him. "Ten isn't splitting the difference."

"It's close enough. Besides, you're too short to be any older. Now, do you want your cake or not?"


	2. She Was Six

**In Which She Was Ten for Three Years**

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p><strong>She was six, but Joshua put ten candles on her cake.<strong>

"—py birthday dear Claudia, happy birthday to you."

She grinned at the double-chocolate cake with purple flowers and sparkly candles that Joshua set down in front of her. It was actually her second birthday celebration today; her class had sung to her at lunchtime too. Even if stupid Tommy Mallon had smeared peanut butter from his lunch in her hair right afterward. She was smart enough to know that someone who had to be reminded not to eat the glue wasn't someone she should bother paying attention to, but he was so _annoying_ sometimes.

She took a deep breath in preparation to blow out the candles, only to let it out in a huff as the number registered. "Hey, there are ten candles here! I was ten last year; this year I get to be eleven!"

Joshua grinned. "Nope, you're still too short."

"I'm the tallest one in my class!"

"Of runts. You're still too short. Now, are you going to blow out your candles, or are you going to wait until we set off the fire alarm again?"

She grinned. "I think Mr. Roberts is getting sick of that."

"I _know_ Mr. Roberts is getting sick of that. I'm afraid the poor man didn't know what he was getting into when he agreed to rent his guest house to us." He shook his head. "What can I say: physics I can handle, but the culinary arts seemed to be beyond me."

"Cuelinn…?"

"Culinary arts. It's a fancy term for cooking. Apparently I can't cook anything except hot dogs, omelets, and ramen noodles."

"Oh. That's true." She shrugged. "It's okay. I like hot dogs and omelets." Ramen noodles were gross, though.

"Well, that's good. Now hurry up and blow out your candles; wax is starting to drip on the frosting."

She did as he asked and then accepted her piece of cake and ice cream. "Are we really going to spend the _whole_ day tomorrow at the aquarium?"

"That's what I promised, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but you've been awfully busy lately." Even on the weekends he always went into the lab for a couple hours. She was running out of things to do while she waited. "I had to eat dinner with Mrs. Thom three times this week. She made me eat peas."

He sighed. "I know. And I'm sorry. Well, not about the peas, peas are good for you. But I'm defending in less than a month, and…well, it's just a very hectic time. I promise, things will calm down afterward."

"Even if you're an 'ssistant professor?"

"That doesn't officially start until fall so we'll have some time to relax before then. Well, unless I really screw my defense up." He shook his head. "Maybe when your school is done for the year I'll take a research break too, and we'll go on vacation somewhere."

"Can we go to Disney World? Melanie brought in pictures of her trip to Disney World last summer for show and tell, and it looks like a really cool place." Especially the space ride and the pirate ship. "Oh, and can I get mouse ears? She got mouse ears."

"We'll see. Now, finish your cake, and I'll read you a story before bed."

That was an offer that didn't need to be repeated twice, and she ate her purple frosting flower—the bite of cake she'd saved for last—and then hurried off to get changed and brush her teeth.

Joshua was waiting in her room when she came out of the bathroom, and he pulled a book off the bookshelf and held it up as she climbed into bed. "_Maria Looney_?"

"Yes." That was her favorite book in the whole world. She scooted sideways so he had room to sit down. "Hey, do you get a sword?"

He paused, halfway through opening the book. "What?"

"When you defend, do you get a sword? Mrs. Winters read us a story about knights, and when they defend things they get swords and horses." The sword didn't really interest her, but….

"Nope, no sword. If I do well, I get a hat and a robe and a piece of paper."

She made a face. That didn't seem worth _anything_. "Well, I could pick out a nice horse for you."

He shook his head. "Claudia, we can't get a horse."

"Are you sure? What about a pony?"

"Yeah, because Mr. Roberts would love a pony munching on his garden. Tell you what, I'll make you a deal. Tomorrow, when we go to the aquarium, you can pick out a stuffed _sea_horse and I'll get that for you. Deal?" He stuck out a hand.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "A real horse would be better."

"Take it or leave it."

"Fine. Deal." She shook his hand. She could try for a real horse again later. Or maybe a kitty.

"Come on, scoot in here so we can read. Chapter three, right?"


	3. She Was Seven

_Thanks to everyone who read and to KJay99, geekgrl113, and Kat Bee Dee for reviewing._

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><p><strong>She was seven, but her cake still had ten candles on it (or it would have if restaurant cakes had more than one candle).<strong>

"—jumped right back up out of his seat," Claudia said with a giggle.

"So that's what that note home yesterday was about. Claudia, you can't go around zapping people who irritate you," Joshua said with a sigh, tapping his fork against his nearly empty plate.

"Why not?" If anyone in the class deserved it, it was Tommy Mallon. Anybody with sense would have taken the hint and left her alone after she punched him in the nose last fall, but he still kept chasing her around on the playground during recess and pulling her hair when he caught her.

"Because…you just can't." He shook his head. "Where did you even learn to build a person-zapper, anyway? I know I haven't taken you to any joke stores, and I kind of doubt that Mrs. Thom has either."

"I found it in a science book at the library. And you've got lots of stuff lying around in your lab; the pieces to build it were easy to find. Well, I did have to take the batteries out of the TV remote, but we only get two channels anyway." She shrugged and then tried again to twirl her spaghetti around the fork like Joshua always did. It didn't work for her, though—it _never_ seemed to work for her—and she gave up and jammed what she could get on her fork into her mouth, sucking the extra strands in afterwards.

"Claudia, you know better than to take stuff out of my lab," he said with a frown.

"You weren't using any of it."

"That's not the point."

That didn't make much sense to her, since if he wasn't using it she didn't see why _she_ shouldn't, but they'd had this argument a few times before, and she always seemed to lose. Or at least Joshua overruled her, which wasn't fair, but it happened anyway. "Anyway, it's not like he was hurt, and he doesn't know it was me who put it on his chair," she continued after a moment. "Miss Frank doesn't even know it was me."

"That's because none of them know how your devious little mind works. If they _did_, your teacher would have put you in detention for a week instead of sending a generic note home with everyone in the class about not bringing 'prank devices' to school." Another shake of his head. "No more stealing parts from my lab and zapping annoying classmates, you got it? Or I'll feed you peas every night for dinner for a month. And you're lucky it's your birthday, or you wouldn't be getting dessert tonight."

"Ah, and it looks like you two have about finished," their waitress—Annie, as she'd introduced herself—said, stopping by their table with a smile before Claudia could come up with an appropriate response. "Would either of you be interested in something for dessert?"

"Do you happen to have chocolate cake?" Joshua asked. "My sister is turning ten today."

"I'm eleven!" Claudia objected.

Annie gave her an uncertain look. "Uh, we do have chocolate cake…."

"Could we get two pieces of that with vanilla ice cream then?" Joshua asked, ignoring Claudia.

Annie's smile returned. "Of course. Just let me get these plates out of your way—" she picked up their dinner dishes, balancing them neatly on one arm—"and I'll have those right out for you. And happy birthday."

Claudia muttered a quick 'thank you' and then gave Joshua her best glare as Annie turned back towards the kitchen. "I should be _eleven_ this year."

"Nope, you're still ten."

"But I can't be ten for _three_ years! And you can't say I'm too short; I'm much taller this year than last year." Still the tallest girl in class, even if the new boy, Michael, was just a little bit taller than her.

"Nope, you're still ten," he repeated with a grin. "You still look like a runt to me."

She stuck out her tongue at him.

"Better pull that in or your face could get stuck like that. And then how will you be able to eat your cake?"

"My fathe can't get thuck like thith."

"Can so."

"Can not." She pulled her tongue in—not because he told her to but because it was too hard to talk like that—and crossed her arms over her chest. "Now _you're_ being ten."

"Maybe so, but—"

Whatever he was about to say was interrupted as Annie reappeared with two other waitresses to sing happy birthday to her, and after they were finished, she set down two pieces of cake.

Joshua thanked them as Claudia blew out the candle on the one sitting in front of her, but before she could do more than reach for her spoon, he snatched both plates of cake up off the table. "Ooh, look who has all the cake. And guess who's too short to reach it?"

Claudia scowled. That was actually a good argument—or at least one she couldn't win without climbing on the table, and she knew perfectly well that you couldn't do things like that in a restaurant—and she uncrossed her arms. "Fine, I guess I'll be ten again. But this is the _last_ year." He grinned and lowered her plate into her hands, and she pulled it over to her quickly. She wasn't about to give him the chance to do that again. The ice cream was already starting to melt. "Are you sure we can't go to the zoo tomorrow?" she asked. "I don't want to have to wait a whole week." It was bad enough that the nasty thunderstorms this morning had meant that they hadn't been able to go today.

"Sorry, Claude, but I told you, I have to meet with a visiting professor tomorrow. Besides, the weather's still supposed to be rainy and cold. I think the forecast said next weekend will be nicer; if we wait and go then we'll get to see more animals since they won't be hiding inside out of the wet."

"I guess." But she'd still rather go tomorrow. A week was _forever_. "We could go on Monday."

"You have school on Monday. And, while I'm thinking about it, you need to apologize to Tommy. Besides, I have a class to teach."

The last was true enough, but the second wasn't happening unless he was standing right beside her and making her, and school in general—her school, anyway—wasn't really all that interesting. She could definitely miss a day without missing anything important. She scooped up a mound of melting ice cream and downed it quickly before looking back at him. "Why do you have to go talk to this professor tomorrow? Tomorrow's Sunday. Can't you talk to him on Monday?"

"I'm going to talk to him tomorrow because tomorrow is when he's getting into town. You remember what I told you about how Rheticus' compass is supposed to work, right?"

She giggled around a mouthful of cake. "Of course. Beam me up, Scotty." The compass—and Rheticus' work in general—was what Joshua had spent most of his research time on in the last several months, and a couple of his friends in the department had been teasing him about it since he'd finally tracked the compass down and brought it to the lab."

He shook his head and jabbed his spoon at her lightly. "Very funny. You know, if I hear that joke one more time, I think I might hurt one of them. Or possibly both of them. But see, from what Professor Ericksson told me, the professor who's coming has access to money from some pretty esoteric sources, and if he likes what he hears, he could recommend me for some grant money. Which I could really use right now. Trying to replicate an experiment like Rheticus'…it's very controversial. Most people are like Simon and George; they don't believe that Rheticus was ever really able to achieve human teleportation and think the whole thing is just a joke and I'll never be able to take it anywhere."

Which was stupid, in Claudia's opinion, since Joshua was the smartest person in the world. Or at least the smartest person out of everyone she'd ever met. If he said he could make the compass work, he could.

"Anyway, Professor Eriksson has been pushing me to get _something_ into a journal this year, especially since this is my first year on the faculty, and I've been having so much trouble finding funding that I'm starting to think that I'm going to have to change my line of research. I'd hate to do that, especially given how much time he and Professor Reynolds put into helping me find the thing, but given that I keep getting turned down flat…." He sighed. "At this point I think I'm in a position where I can recreate the basic experiment, but if I'm going to be able to take my research any further, a grant would be a lifesaver."

"Mm." She licked her spoon clean and debated whether or not she could finish the rest of the piece. Probably. There were only a few bites left. "I guess waiting and going to the zoo next Saturday makes sense, then."

"Well, I'm glad you approve."

"But can I come with you to meet the professor tomorrow? Mrs. Thom always watches church shows on Sunday, and it's really boring."

"I guess. But only if you _swear_ not to take anything else out of my lab. Got it?"

"Got it." He hadn't said that she couldn't build stuff in the lab, after all.

"Good. Now, why don't you finish off your cake and we can go home and see what you got for presents?"


	4. She Was Eight

_Thanks to everyone who read and especially those who reviewed._

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><p><strong>She was eight, and the whole world was stupid.<strong>

The cake was vanilla. With yellow and green frosting. And there were only eight candles on it. Claudia had tried to explain the whole eleven-this-year concept to her foster mother, but Ellen had just smiled absently, given her an isn't-she-cute look, and…well, here was an eight-candle cake.

She got a lot of those looks now. From her teacher when Claudia tried to tell her that there was no point in her memorizing times tables because she could already multiply numbers a whole lot bigger than anything they did in class in her head. From her older foster siblings when she told them that they were spelling things wrong in their homework. From the therapist-guy her social worker made her go visit every other week when she told him that she wasn't suffering from post-traumatic stress anything, her brother _had_ disappeared in a flash of light. Even from said social worker, when Claudia told her that she could manage her life just fine and didn't need any foster parents fussing at her. Everyone seemed to expect her to be a normal eight year old, and she just _wasn't_, and for some reason they were too stupid to figure that out. Joshua would have understood, but….

She bit back a sigh and blew out the candles, lying when they asked if she'd made a wish. She was too old to wish. And it didn't really matter how many candles were on the cake; she probably wouldn't be staying here much longer anyway.

Slices of cake were passed out—not by her, because according to her foster parents she was too young to use a knife, too—and she pushed hers around on her plate until Ellen and Joe finished theirs and moved to the sink to start washing the dinner dishes. Then she stood, dumping half her cake onto each of her foster brothers' plates and escaping to her room.

Technically she shared the room with a sixteen year old foster sister—an annoying one who not only couldn't spell but also spent half an hour in the bathroom every morning fixing her makeup—but Marjorie was visiting her mother or aunt or somebody this weekend so there was no one to bother her.

She dropped to her knees beside the bed and reached for Joshua's old duffel, tucked neatly under the end nearest the wall. She'd moved her clothes to the dresser drawers when she'd come to live here—clothes didn't matter, especially since everything Joshua had bought for her she'd long since outgrown—but she kept her important things in there. She'd learned that lesson when she'd accidentally left her old Girl Scout vest in her first temporary home. Miss Baylis had said she'd get it, but she never had, and now Claudia kept everything that she couldn't stand to lose in one place.

Sammy Seahorse was on top, since she took him out to sleep with every night, and she set him aside carefully. One of his eyes was starting to fall off; she'd have to fix that soon. A pair of plastic Mickey Mouse ears was under him, and below that was a badly battered copy of _Maria Looney on the Red Planet_, a slightly less abused volume called _Science Experiments for Every Age_ that Joshua had given her last year, and an old pencil box. Good. Everything was where it should be.

She didn't know exactly when Miss Baylis would be coming to move her to another foster home—she didn't think she was supposed to know that she was coming at all—but she'd overheard her and Ellen and Dr. Tomas talking a couple days ago after her last therapy session, and it was pretty obvious that it was coming. They'd been talking about post-traumatic stress again, and attachment problems, and a bunch of other stuff, with the final conclusion being that she'd do better with foster parents who had more experience with 'special needs' children. She wasn't actually sure if they hadn't know she was listening or just assumed that she wouldn't understand, but they were wrong on both counts. Again.

"Claudia? Do you want to come open your presents?" Ellen called.

Oh. Right. Birthdays meant presents. "I'll be there in just a minute," she called back.

She opened the pencil box, taking care with the broken hinge, and flipped quickly through the pictures it held. Her and Joshua in their apartment, her and Joshua again, this time at Disney World, her and Joshua and their parents in front of their house…. There were only about a dozen photographs in the stack; Joshua had never been much of a picture person, and she didn't know what had happened to the albums that had been at the house before Mommy and Daddy had died. She couldn't have fit too much more in the box, though, so it was probably just as well.

She set the pictures aside, next to her books. She didn't think that Miss Baylis knew about the things she'd taken out of Joshua's desk before she'd been taken away to her first foster home—probably not, or, if she knew about any of it it was again with the assumption that Claudia didn't understand what it was—but even at seven-slash-ten she'd known that those things would mean her freedom eventually. She wasn't about to leave them in anyone else's hands.

Two folded envelopes held account numbers and associated paperwork, one for the savings account that her parents' insurance and the money from the sale of the house had gone into, and one for Joshua's checking account. And the key taped in one corner was to the safety deposit box at the big bank downtown. Someday she'd get to use it.

She put the pictures back in the box, neatly hiding the papers underneath, and latched it, shoving it back in her bag and then repacking everything else on top of it before going to join her foster family in their living room. She might as well see what they got her. Even if it was probably going to be more suited to an eight year old than an eleven year old.


	5. She Was Nine

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p><strong>She was nine, and there was no cake.<strong>

Claudia stared up at the ceiling, hugging the now one-eyed Sammy Seahorse to her chest. She should be twelve today, according to her count, but no one here seemed to know that, and there wasn't even a nine-candled cake for her. Not that she really cared. They'd sung happy birthday to her in school earlier, and if she did get cake here, it would probably have ended up being vanilla anyway.

She wasn't entirely sure what had prompted Miss Baylis to remove her from Shelly and Eric's home last Friday and dump her in this place. She hadn't expected it, and she didn't think that they had either. After all, she'd been there for almost six months, and, at least from her perspective, things were going okay. She hadn't gotten in any trouble at school—or at least she hadn't been _caught_, which amounted to the same thing—and while they still made her go see Dr. Tomas every other week, at least they let her pick out her own books at the library and clothes at the store. Eric had even promised to teach her how to play the guitar sometime. In the home she'd been in before theirs Mrs. Kendrick had just brought home whatever she felt like, and between the not-even-chapter books, puzzles for babies, and t-shirts with dumb cartoon characters on them, she'd been ready to strangle her foster mother long before she was taken away.

Given the way that Miss Baylis had looked at her when she'd picked her up, she had a sneaking suspicion that her removal had something to do with those tests they'd taken in school last month, but why tests would mean changing homes she had no idea.

She tugged Sammy's nose lightly. On the day all the third graders in the school had taken the tests, her teacher had told the whole class to just do their best and that their scores didn't matter, but said teacher's expression when she'd asked Claudia where her results should be mailed had been really weird. The same way that Miss Baylis' expression had been strange when she'd come to Eric and Shelly's to pick Claudia up a couple days later. Her teacher still looked at her strangely sometimes when she didn't think Claudia was looking, and Claudia couldn't help but wonder if Miss Baylis was going to be the same way.

She didn't even know exactly what her results for the test _were_ since they'd had to go to the social services agency like all of her other paperwork instead of directly to her, but she was sure she'd passed. Probably with an A+. After all, the questions hadn't been that hard. Well, a few of her classmates had been confused by them, but then, a few of her classmates got confused when the cafeteria ran out of chocolate milk too, so that wasn't saying much.

There had been some pattern matching, some vocabulary questions, some paragraphs to read and talk about, some math…really, nothing too difficult. The hardest part had been when the man who'd talked to her had given her strings of numbers and she'd had to repeat them all back. It had been as easy of the rest of it at first, but then the list of numbers had gotten longer and longer, and she knew she'd forgotten some of the numbers in the longest one and possibly the one before that too. But that wouldn't make people think she was stupid; again, she had classmates who still didn't understand what fractions were.

She heard a shriek of laughter from the room next to hers, and she hugged Sammy tighter and scowled up at the ceiling. Miss Baylis had said the group home would be temporary, but she hadn't said _how_ temporary, and even after three days, Claudia was running out of patience with her current foster sisters. Three of the five were about twelve, the same age she was supposed to be this year, but instead of talking to her, they called her a baby and ignored her. Even though she shared a room with one of them. The other two girls were enough older that being ignored by them wasn't quite so annoying—it would be worse if they treated her like a little kid and wanted to babysit her or something—but….

She rolled off the bed, automatically pulling her duffel out from underneath to stuff Sammy in. She didn't care what some test said, and she didn't care if she hadn't been invited to paint her nails with the others either. She'd go get herself a snack out of the cabinet and borrow one of the books off Ms. Snyder's bookshelf and celebrate by herself.


	6. She Was Ten

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p><strong>She was ten, and picking her own presents would have been way better.<strong>

There wasn't a Barbie doll like the one that Zoe had been given for her birthday last month, but that was about the best that Claudia could say for the presents in front of her.

It wasn't even that she didn't like books. She did. But that was _all_ they'd given her. And three of the four didn't even look very interesting. No dragons, no unicorns, no spaceships…the last one might have an interesting science experiment or two in it, if she could take a couple things apart to get the parts, anyway, but that was about it.

She'd found out last year that when people learned that she'd scored scary-high on some dumb IQ test, they tended to treat her a little differently than other kids her age. She wasn't sure exactly why some stupid test made such a big difference since anyone with _eyes_ should have been able to tell that she was smarter than her classmates, but while it made some things nicer, other times it was just annoying.

Like now. Just because she was smart didn't mean that she wouldn't like a bracelet or a CD or maybe to get her ears pierced like Erica had said she'd gotten to do for her last birthday—Claudia had only been here a month and a half so she hadn't seen it, but Erica's ears were pierced so she had no reason to disbelieve the older girl—or something like that. And it _definitely_ didn't mean that she wanted to read a bunch of history books. Like this one…_Mary, Queen of Scots_. With some creepy looking lady in a weird dress on the cover. Yuck.

"Wow, ten," Jerry said with a pat on her shoulder as she set the books aside and looked towards the kitchen. Where Annie was cutting chocolate cake, since they'd actually asked her what kind she wanted. They were the first foster parents that ever had…she liked Annie and Jerry. Granted that they liked historical stuff way too much in her opinion—not only was that what most of her presents _and_ all of their books were about, they had a whole closet of costumes and according to Erica wore them to different fairs during the summers—but they acted kind of like grandparents. Or at least what she thought grandparents should act like, since it wasn't like she'd ever met hers. She looked back at him, and he smiled. "All the way up into the double digits now. That's quite a milestone."

"Yeah." She faked a grin in return. She'd been ten three times; the novelty had pretty much worn off at this point. Besides, she should be thirteen this year, not that she bothered trying to explain that anymore. Being a teenager, now _that_ was a milestone.

"Smile," Erica said, and she turned her grin in that direction automatically. Claudia liked Erica well enough. As far as foster sisters went, she was pretty cool; not nearly as annoying as nine year old Zoe was, even if she did seem to have that camera permanently attached to her hand.

"Erica, put that down and come help me carry plates," Annie ordered. "Jerry, have you shown Claudia those brochures Miss Baylis—excuse me, Mrs. Campos—sent over?"

"Oh, no, I haven't." He stood and reached over to pull a folder out of the desk. "She dropped these off a couple days before she left on her honeymoon. They're government-sponsored programs and they all run for a week during the summer. Only a certain number of children are accepted for each program, so if you want to apply we'll need to do so soon."

"It says the minimum age is twelve." Which she was older than, but no one ever understood that.

Jerry shook his head. "Well, normally it is only for ages twelve to fifteen—Erica went for the first time last year, to a photography camp—but under special circumstances they allow ten year olds to participate. What do you think?"

"Summer camp?" That was interesting, and she picked up the first brochure. "Ooh, can I go to space camp?" _That_ would be cool.

"Well, I don't think you'll be able to go anywhere out of state, but there's a writing camp just down at the college that you might like."

Writing. Ick. And space came was out of state. And so was the computer camp and astronomy camp and the one just called tech camp. She frowned. There had to be _something_ science-based in the state.


	7. She Was Eleven

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. I had some extra time today since the weather is miserable and these chapters are a little shorter than those in most of my other stories, so here's the next installment._

_I got a question about when other things were going to start happening (the Warehouse turns up, Joshua comes back, etc.), but since she's only eleven/fourteen at this point, it's going to be a few more years/chapters._

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><p><strong>She was eleven, and there was some interesting stuff inside a computer.<strong>

"No, Mrs. Campos didn't mention anything about summer camps," Ms. Snyder said with a shake of her head. "There may not be any money in the budget for it this year. Eat your dessert."

Claudia made a face and pushed around the slice of cake sitting in front of her with her fork, although the three other girls at the table were digging in. It was raspberry lemon something, not really her thing, and yet again it had the wrong number of candles. Well, whatever. It didn't matter anyway. And it wasn't like she'd liked math camp _that_ much.

Annie and Jerry were off in Idaho visiting their oldest son and their newborn granddaughter, so she and Erica were stuck here for at least another week. They'd apologized and left presents for her—that had been nice, even if they had been all books again—and she knew they couldn't exactly help the baby's timing, but….

"Ms. Snyder? Something's wrong with your computer."

Claudia twisted to find Erica standing in the doorway of the kitchen. She didn't get any cake tonight since she'd gotten a note sent home from school about not turning in some big English assignment and had to work on that instead, and she really didn't look happy.

"What happened?" Ms. Snyder asked.

"I don't know. My folder fell on it, and it just…stopped."

"Well, you'll just have to write out the rest of your assignment tonight, and I'll make an appointment at the repair shop tomorrow."

"But she said we have to have the final report _typed_. That's why we went to the computer lab every day last week."

"Well, then you should have worked on it then instead of putting it off. I'm afraid you'll have to tell your teacher that it's going to take at least one more day."

"But I'll get more detentions! Maybe all next week too!"

"There's not much I can do about that."

Claudia pushed herself up from her seat. "I can look at it."

Ms. Snyder frowned. "I don't think that's such a good idea. You're a little young to be playing with electronics."

"I fix the computer at Annie and Jerry's all the time." Well, technically she unstuck paper jams in the printer since she had the smallest hands in the house since Zoe had gone back to live with her mom, but the printer was attached to the computer so that was close enough. Besides, she should be fourteen, which wasn't _that_ young, and she had looked at a couple computer books, even if they hadn't been very good ones. "It's already broken," she pointed out.

"Mm."

That was as close to approval as she could hope to get, and Claudia hurried out of the room after Erica before Ms. Snyder could change her mind.

"Please, please be able to fix this," Erica said as they reached the living room. "If I have to spend any extra days in detention, I think I'm going to strangle someone."

"Why?" Claudia had ended up in detention a few times, but since the 'extra' assignments she was given never took her more than twenty or so minutes to do, she usually just used the rest of the time to read. It was a lot quieter there than out on the playground, although she knew that after elementary school detentions were after school instead of at recess so that was a little different.

"This jerk in my class has detention all this week too, and he keeps shooting spitballs at me when the teacher isn't looking."

"_Eew_." Claudia took a seat in the computer chair, tapping a couple keys and staring at the blank screen..

"Exactly. Middle school boys are gross. And since he hasn't been working on his assignment at all—he told me so—he's for sure going to be there next week."

Claudia shook her head and gestured at the computer. "What happened to this again?"

"Well, I said it was my folder, but really this fell on it." She lifted her English book. "It hit the top of the box and the screen just went blank."

"At the exact same time?"

"Yeah."

Claudia frowned for a moment and then knelt down beside the tower, reaching behind it. The book had had fallen on metal, so it couldn't have smashed anything, but maybe something got knocked out of place. There didn't seem to be any loose cables behind it though, and everything she traced seemed to go somewhere reasonable—one to the monitor, one to the modem, one to the plug in the wall, one to the keyboard, and one to the mouse—so…. She pulled the cables out of the back one by one and then dragged the tower out from beside the desk. The outside wires all looked okay, but she knew there were more inside. "Can you help me get this open?"

Erica looked uncertain. "Are you sure we should?"

"It's already broken," she repeated.

It took a few moments to pry the side off—the metal clips were tight, and Claudia would have had a hard time with it alone—and then she bit her tongue as she looked down inside it. There was a big green board with a bunch of little squares and metal things on it…if something had fallen out of there, she'd never be able to tell. And then there was a fan-looking thing up in the corner, some wires that went from the green board into the back of the CD drive, and... "Ha. I think that's it."

"What?"

"See that metal box? There's a place for wires to attach, and a wire loose that looks like it should fit right in."

Erica didn't look convinced, but Claudia grabbed the wires and shoved them back where it looked like they should go. "Let's try that."

Putting this side back on was even harder than taking it off had been, and they didn't get it attached quite right, but Ms. Snyder probably wouldn't be able to tell since it sat beside the desk anyway. And at least this way if she had to open it again—or if she _wanted_ to open it again—it would be a lot easier. She reconnected the back cables and pressed the power button and—

"_Yes!_" Erica exclaimed as the screen came to life. "Thank you _so_ much."

It took a minute for it to start up the rest of the way, but when it did, Claudia grinned. That hadn't been hard at all, but there were a lot more parts in there that might be fun to play with. Even if she couldn't go to any camps this year, maybe she could find some more computer books. There was a way where you were allowed to borrow books from other libraries and have them sent to the local one…there had to be ones that had been written less than ten years ago _somewhere_.

"Here. I know it's your birthday, and I meant you get you something, but then I sort of spent all my allowance, and Annie and Jerry left before I could ask for an advance so…."

"For real?" Granted that shiny stones on the bracelet Erica took off and offered too her were just plastic, but it was still really pretty.

"Sure. It'll look good on you."

Claudia took the bracelet with a grin and slipped it on to her own wrist. "Thanks."

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><p><em>Author's Note—Should it ever come up, reaching blindly into your computer is not a good idea. In this case, Claudia got lucky, but at the very least ground yourself first.<em>


	8. She Was Twelve

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p><strong>She was twelve, and she <em>hated<em> her little foster brother.**

Okay, she didn't really _hate_ him, but she definitely didn't _like_ him very much either. Not only had he'd been in her stuff—which she definitely hadn't said was okay; in fact she'd told him to keep out of it about a million times—but now she finds out that he took her Mickey Mouse ears off somewhere and _lost_ them. And Mr. and Mrs. Scott were acting like she was the unreasonable one! So what if they were just mouse ears and too small for her now? They were _hers_, and Joshua had got them for her, and nobody else had any business touching them!

"Claudia?" There was a knock on the door. "Do you mind if I come in?"

Claudia glared up at the ceiling. "Does it matter? Everyone else—like _Tyler_—gets to come in here whenever they want."

The Scotts only had one extra bedroom for foster kids since they'd never fostered more than one at a time in the past; when she'd been foisted on them after an eight or nine month stretch of short-term homes following Annie and Jerry's move to be near their son, they'd ended up sticking her in their spare-slash-computer room. And while she was glad that there was a rule that said foster children over a certain age and of opposite sexes had to have separate bedrooms so she didn't have to share a room with Tyler, a room where everyone else was allowed to wander in and out whenever they wanted to wasn't really any better.

She was pretty sure that that was breaking the rules too, but since the Scotts had said that it was only temporary—their son Jason was away at college so they could fix up his room for her to use—and she'd been having so much trouble locating anything else, Mrs. Campos had okayed it. Unfortunately their definition of 'temporary' seemed to be a little different than Claudia's. It had been a month, almost a month and a half, and Jason's room was still Jason's room and she was still in here.

Mrs. Scott opened the door and stepped in. "Claudia, he has a right to use the computer the same as you do."

She snorted. Exactly her problem with the whole setup. "He doesn't have any right to touch my stuff, but you're fine with him doing that too."

"No, we are not fine with him touching your things, but you had no right to yell at him."

She rolled to glare at her foster mother. "Yeah, because if he'd gone and _stolen_ something really important of yours and then went and _lost_ it—and is too dumb to even remember _where_ he lost it—you'd just pat him on the head and say, 'Oh, don't worry about it. Here, why don't you go set the house on fire too?'"

"Claudia, you're being ridiculous. He's seven. You have to make allowances."

No, she really didn't. She scowled and kept her mouth shut.

Mrs. Scott sighed. "Since it's your birthday, if you think you can behave yourself and be civil, you can come join us for cake."

"I don't _want_ cake. Especially since you didn't even bother to ask what kind I like. I do want my mouse ears, but I guess that doesn't matter." She rolled back over to face the wall.

After a moment, there was another sigh, and then footsteps retreated and the door clicked shut. Good. She rolled to her feet.

The single tolerable thing about being in here was that she had access to the computer whenever she wanted. The Scotts did have personalized profiles and some kind of kiddie lock program set up that was supposed to keep her and Tyler from looking at the wrong things or using it more than a couple hours a week or when they were supposed to be asleep or that sort of thing, but it was pretty worthless. As in, it had taken her all of ten minutes to figure out how to get around it. Granted that she'd had a little practice with the filters in the computer lab at school—most of the kids tried to get past them a few times, she and two of the boys in her class were actually _good_ at it—but the Scotts seemed to fall into the category of people who relegated the term 'genius' to mean 'deserving of strange looks' and 'should get good grades' and didn't think much beyond that. It was pretty stupid of them, in her opinion, although not the dumbest thing that anyone had ever come up with.

She fingered the bracelet that Erica had given her last year. She wasn't even sure where Erica was now...she'd been taken off somewhere else when they left Annie and Jerry's, and it wasn't like foster kids were able to exchange addresses. And she probably wouldn't be getting any presents this year, not with the way Mrs. Scott had acted when she'd heard Claudia yelling. Like Claudia was just supposed to tell Tyler that losing one of the only things she had left that Joshua had given her was okay.

Claudia sighed. It wasn't that Mrs. Scott's reaction was really a surprise. Tyler was exactly the kind of 'normal' kid that foster parents liked while Claudia was very much not, and the fact that he'd been with them for like two years as opposed to an awkward six weeks made a difference too. That didn't change the fact that this whole situation was irritating, though.

She shoved the spare chair in front of the door before taking a seat at the computer. It wouldn't keep anyone from coming in, but it would give her some warning if they tried. Most of the time she just used the normal account Mr. Scott had made her—up until the time lock kicked in, anyway, or when it was late at night and she couldn't sleep—and they could look at her history of reading about whatever her interest of the week was and feel…happy…or whatever about their parenting skills. It wasn't like the things she looked up were secrets. Maybe a little weird for a should-be-fifteen year old, but not secrets. But right now she was in the mood to be destructive, and the other day she'd found a really cool board about viruses.


	9. She Was Thirteen

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p><strong>She was thirteen and still grounded.<strong>

Apparently serious hacking should not be done from one's foster parents' house. At least not without finding a good way to mask one's trail first. She'd read references to that sort of thing online, but at the time, she hadn't paid much attention. It wasn't a mistake that she'd make again.

Fortunately, she hadn't actually been _doing_ anything when her activities had been traced, and she'd managed a very successful just-a-kid-didn't-mean-to-be-bad defense when the police had shown up and Julie had confirmed that Claudia was the only one who'd been on the computer when the incident had occurred. And equally fortunately, at least for Claudia, they'd believed her and decided let her off with only a stern warning: if anything like that ever happened again it would go on her 'permanent record.' She'd been threatened with that a few times before and still wasn't sure that such a thing actually existed, but in response to the police visit Rick and Julie had locked down her access to the computer. It was annoying.

If she could just _get_ to the computer, she wouldn't have any problems since she could bypass their kiddie-lock program as easily as every other one, but when one of them was looking over her shoulder all the time when she was working on it, there wasn't much she could do. And the door to the study was locked the rest of the time so she couldn't even sneak in and get around them that way.

Officially her month-long grounding was supposed to be up next week, but she kind of doubted that they'd give her free access to the computer again. And while some stuff she could do from school, some of it she couldn't. Plus, apparently either one of her foster parents or Mrs. Campos had told them what happened too because she was now watched a lot more closely in the computer lab than any of the other kids there. That was _very_ annoying, especially since it made it hard to look for websites about picking door locks.

Despite her grounding, there would be cake tonight, she'd been informed, and a present or two had been hinted at, but it would be later since Rick worked at the factory and wouldn't make it home until after nine. Which was nice, although it wasn't like she was really expecting much from them. Not that they were unkind, but even without the computer trouble, she'd been in the system more than long enough to recognize a 'not quite a match' home. It wasn't a _bad_ situation or anything—she'd been here two or three months now, following another string of short-term homes after the Scotts had requested re-placement, and they got along fine—but there was an awkward sort of formality in their interactions and it was pretty clear that if it hadn't faded by now, it never would. Rick and Julie would be great foster parents for _somebody_, but if Claudia was here more than another month or so, she'd be surprised.

Her main hope for tonight was just that there wouldn't be too many 'wow, you're a teenager now' comments. By her count she'd been one for three years, so it wasn't really anything special. If they were teaching her to drive, now that would be special, but somehow she just didn't see that happening.

With a sigh, she checked to make sure that the door was firmly shut and then moved her backpack to her bed and opened it. All the city middle schools had gotten new math supplies donated by some corporation that wanted to do something nice for the community—Claudia didn't actually buy that motive, but none of her teachers had said anything that would confirm her suspicions—and all the old stuff had been piled up in boxes to be taken somewhere else. She didn't care about rulers or protractors or that kind of thing, but in one of those boxes had been calculators, and since it seemed a waste just to throw them away, she'd helped herself to a few when no one was looking. Her birthday present to herself. And better than anything else anyone was likely to get her.

Technically there were actually eleven of them in her backpack, ten of which turned on and one that might need new batteries, and while they weren't _real_ computers, they did have computer chips in them, so it was kind of close. She'd need wires and probably real tools to do anything, and she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to turn the things into, but doing anything was better than sitting here in her room reading or scribbling on notepaper or reading her history book for the fourth time since she'd already read everything else in the house.

Of course, where she was going to get wires and tools remained in question. She took a look around the room. Wires might not be as hard as she'd thought: that alarm clock had an _incredibly_ annoying ring, and it wasn't like she didn't wake up when the sun came streaming in through the too-thin blinds anyway. And the lamp on the dresser was probably as old as she was so if it stopped working there probably wouldn't be any questions. Tools were a little more problematical…a nail file, tweezers, and paperclips could only take you so far. A pocketknife would help, but she kind of doubted that she could convince anyone to give her one, and neither Rick nor Julie had much of anything in the way of tools that she could 'borrow.' Well, she'd figure something out.


	10. She Was Fourteen

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p><strong>She was fourteen, and well-meaning foster parents were almost as bad as the kind that didn't give a damn at all.<strong>

Claudia fingered the duffel that Ira had given her and tried not to be annoyed. After all, it wasn't like her old duffel _wasn't_ falling apart at the seams. She'd patched it at least a dozen times, both straps had been reattached with fishing line a couple years ago—and probably needed to be redone again—one zipper was held shut by a safety pin….

"Claudia?"

"Oh. Sorry." She looked up and gave him and Rebecca the best smile that she could manage. "I was just thinking about something else. It's great, thanks."

"Why don't you go put your things in your room and then we'll have cake?" Rebecca suggested.

"Okay. Sure. I'll be right back."

She picked up the duffel and the CDs and headed down the hall to her room quickly. It was nice that they'd seen her bag and actually noticed that she needed a replacement, but...hers had been Joshua's. And with Sammy Seahorse having been basically _dissolved_ a couple months ago when Ms. whatever-her-name-had been had insisted on putting him through the wash—Claudia had told her that he was too old and the fabric too thin, but she hadn't bothered to listen—it was one of very few things that she had left. That and her picture box. And she didn't even look like the girl in those pictures anymore. Taller, obviously, and her hair had darkened and gained a reddish tint. Not red-red, not like Mom's had been, but more red than it had been. And she didn't grin like that much anymore either.

With a shake of her head, she pulled her picture box out of Joshua's old duffel and put it in her new one. Sentimental value or not, her old bag really was falling apart at the seams, and hanging onto it wouldn't do any good if she lost the things inside it.

Calci followed her box a bit more carefully. It was almost a year old now, and kind of outdated—its basic chip wasn't even from a graphing calculator—but it was the first code-breaking device she'd ever come up with, and she didn't want to part with it yet. Or accidentally smash it. After a minute of thought, she balled up the old duffel and stuffed it into the new bag too. I might be stupid to keep using it as a bag considering the shape it was in, but that didn't mean that she couldn't repurpose part of it for something else.

The bag went back under the bed, and then she headed back to the kitchen where Ira and Rebecca were waiting. They didn't have any other foster kids, and she was just as glad. Dealing with other kids at school was annoying enough. Next year she'd be at the high school, which had to be a little better—if nothing else, she'd finally be able to put herself into classes that interested her instead of the default 'electives' that everyone in middle school had to take at some point—but if her classmates didn't mature at least a _little_ in the meantime, she was going to scream.

"Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?" Rebecca asked.

"Chocolate." Chocolate cake plus chocolate ice cream, pretty much the best snack ever. Especially since the chocolate cake was homemade, a perk of foster parents who owned a bakery.

"Did you ever get your CD player fixed?" Ira asked. "I know you mentioned that you were working on it, but if it's still broken we can pick you up a new one. I just wasn't sure if you needed one."

"Huh? Oh, no, it's fine." What she really wanted was an mp3 player, but they were kind of expensive—more than anyone working from a foster care stipend would be able to afford, probably—and so far she hadn't managed to track one down that just needed a few repairs. In a few years, they'd probably be cheaper, but she kind of wanted to get her hands on one before the technology was totally ancient. "The read head was just misaligned. Loose screw."

That got two nods, although she didn't think that either of them really understood. Well, okay, they probably got 'loose screw' just fine, but lasers…not so much. They were the best foster parents she'd had in awhile, but they did spend most of their time working in the bakery downstairs and weren't necessarily the most tech-savvy people she'd ever met. Heck, there hadn't even been a kiddie-filter on their computer for her to bypass. Of course, said computer also connected to the Internet through the _phone lines_, something she hadn't even realized was possible anymore, and by the time anything interesting loaded she'd usually lost interest anyway, but it was the principle of the thing.

"So are you looking forward to the field trip to Washington?" Ira asked.

"Yeah, I guess. I'm still going to need them to okay it though, and you know how _that_ goes." Every year the twenty-five-to-fifty eighth graders in the city with the highest grades got a trip to Washington for a couple days as sort of a reward. For surviving middle school without killing anyone, in Claudia's opinion. Given her grades, and despite the fact that she didn't really work at any of them, it was pretty much a guarantee that she'd be invited, but considering that they had to cross state lines—several state lines—to get there, getting the paperwork cleared was going to be a pain. If it was even possible at all. Such were the joys of foster care.

"I'm sure it won't be a problem. And you saw the schedule: two whole days at the Smithsonian, and you can pick which museums to spend it at. And you could go the Capitol, and the Library of Congress, and all the monuments, and maybe even the White House too." Rebecca smiled. "It sounds like a fun time."

"Yeah, I guess," she repeated. She'd read the little blurb in the newsletter that had been sent home for parents, and the Air and Space Museum, at least, would be cool. But she wasn't going to get her hopes up, not with the way she'd been bouncing around this past year. Hell, the past _three_ years. It was harder to place teens than little kids, everyone knew that, but... She shook her head and made herself smile again. Ira and Rebecca were nice, and despite very different interests they seemed to like her; hopefully she'd be able to stay here for awhile.


	11. She Was Fifteen

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p><strong>She was fifteen, and she was out of here.<strong>

Claudia shook Mr. Tyler's hand, accepted the packet of papers he offered her, and tried not to start giggling. Because if she did, she would never be able to stop. This was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. It should _not_ have worked, not in a million years.

But Ira had had a heart attack a couple months ago—fortunately not a serious one, but he and Rebecca had decided that they had to take some time off from fostering for awhile—and Claudia had ended up bouncing around some more searching for a new foster family. None of the first set had stuck, and Mrs. Campos had gone on maternity leave while she'd been in the respite home waiting for yet another placement, so when they finally found one she'd been moved by _someone who didn't know her_ to a new home where _nobody_ knew her. All it had taken was two minutes in the pathetically-unprotected social services computer system to get herself introduced as seventeen instead of fourteen, and now, on her fifteenth-slash-eighteenth birthday, her interim social worker was handing over her paperwork and declaring that she was free. Well, technically he was declaring that she'd aged out of the system and suggesting several transitional programs in the area that might be of help to her, but either way, it was completely insane.

Each of the Mitchells, including six year old Bobby, had come out to say goodbye, and she clutched her duffel tightly and did not laugh. Completely insane or not, her spur of the moment plan had worked, and she wasn't going to do anything that might spoil it now.

Oh, at some point someone was going to notice that something was wrong. Claudia didn't know much about the benefits offered to social workers, but Mrs. Campos would have to come back to work sometime, and when she did she'd probably notice that she was one case light. And Claudia had no doubt that there were paper files lying somewhere around the social services office that proved that she'd really been born three years later than their computer was now claiming. But by then she would be long gone, and as long as she didn't do anything completely stupid, she should be able to avoid getting caught.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay here for a little longer?" Mrs. Mitchell asked again, frowning up at the darkening sky. "I know you're eighteen now, and all excited to be out on your own, but we're not going to just slam the door in your face. Maybe you should stay until the weekend, and then we can help you find an apartment."

Claudia shook her head. It was unlikely that she'd be found out in the next three days, but she wasn't going to take the chance. "That's okay; I've got a place."

Mrs. Mitchell clucked her tongue and shook her head. "Well, if you're sure. But you've got our number. You call if you need anything, do you understand?"

"I will." Not. "Thank you. You too, Mr. Tyler."

Mr. Tyler nodded and turned for his car, and Claudia tucked the flyers and overstuffed manila envelope he'd given her into her duffel. She didn't think that there was anything he'd given her that she didn't already have copies of in her box—well, except for the list of resources for kids leaving foster care, anyway—but she wouldn't know until she had time to go through everything.

She watched as his car pulled away, and then she slung her duffel up over her shoulder and picked up her backpack with the rest of her clothes and books in it. "Goodbye, and thanks again," she said with a wave to the Mitchells before heading off down the street.

She was three blocks away and passing McDonalds before it occurred to her that she really _didn't_ have a place to go, and she stopped in to get an ice cream and directions to the nearest motel. She probably should have done that before, but even though she'd known this day was coming, up until Mr. Tyler had showed up after dinner she hadn't really believed that it would work.

An ice cream cone and a cheap motel room—it would have to be cheap, she didn't have that much money on her—might not be the fanciest way to spend her birthday, but at least she would have privacy to go through her paperwork and plan out exactly what to do next. Some of it was obvious: find a place to rent, move her and Joshua's money to new accounts so she couldn't be traced that way, sign up for a GED exam so she could legitimately claim that she was done with school, look for a job where no one would ask too many questions….

She did have an ID that claimed she was eighteen instead of fifteen thanks to a couple of budding forgers at school, so that was a start. She'd traded one of her electronic codebreakers in return, and even if she did look a little younger than eighteen, hopefully the ID would be enough to convince people. The guys hadn't understood why she didn't want to be twenty-one like everyone else who wanted IDs did, but buying beer wasn't exactly her first priority right now. And the fact that she _wasn't_ claiming to be twenty-one might be enough to keep anyone from looking at it too closely. The thing looked fine to her, but forgery wasn't exactly her specialty, and Tom had said specifically not to let any police officers see it.

She got a room at the motel two streets down without any questions being asked, but then, this didn't exactly look like the kind of place where people asked questions. At least the room was relatively clean.

Tomorrow…tomorrow she would do the bank stuff, and the apartment stuff. And maybe get herself a computer if there was enough money for it; that would be a nice birthday present. If not she could always build one—even if she did buy one she'd probably end up doing customizations, anyway—but that was the one thing that she really needed that she didn't already own. Once she had a computer, she'd go ahead and take herself out of the school system. High school wasn't as bad as middle school had been, even if her classes were still ridiculously easy, but if someone at social services _did_ notice something was wrong, it would be way too easy to trace her that way.

She grinned to herself and put the chain on the motel room door. Hell, given that she'd figured out the secretary's password during the first week of school, if she had a computer she could just hack herself a real high school diploma and forget the GED exam. That might not be such a bad idea, now that she thought about it.

She dropped her bag of clothes on the floor and pulled the paperwork Mr. Tyler had given her and her box out of her duffel, dumping it all out on the bed. The pictures were set back in the box carefully; she didn't want to risk damaging them, but they weren't what she was interested in at the moment.

The first set of papers were social services resources...she hadn't thought so initially, but they might worth taking a look at. It wasn't like she was going to use their transitional housing or enroll in whatever the 'Independent Living Program' was—it sounded like foster-care-lite and specified people eighteen to twenty-one—but there might be a few useful suggestions about job hunting. She set it aside.

Bank paperwork, bank paperwork…apparently someone at the social services office had been getting account statements for her, which was nice of them, but there were no new accounts here that she hadn't already known about. A listing of the _contents_ of a safety deposit box, that was different. Not all that useful since she had the key in her box and would be opening it herself in the next day or two, but at least she now knew where her birth certificate and social security card were. Not that she could use them, since they both referenced that pesky fact about her being fifteen, but it was good to know where they were. Apparently there was some jewelry and Joshua's ID stuff in there too...not so useful, but good to know.

This was an invoice for a storage compartment as well, and she spent a minute staring at the address. Nothing came to mind immediately, but maybe that was where the things from the house had gone after Mom and Dad had died. She'd definitely have to check that out. There was some crap about IQ tests, nothing there that she didn't already knew, her midterm report card from the school—she was lucky that he hadn't noticed that it said ninth grade—and not much else. That was okay, though. She could manage with what she had. She was _free_.


	12. She Was Sixteen

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. Currently recovering from the plague (or at least a nasty flu/allergy combination that's made my life miserable for the last two weeks), so I'm not sure how fast chapters will be coming, but we're getting close to Joshua and the warehouse so I'll do my best._

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><p><strong>She was sixteen and living large. Or at least getting by on her own just fine.<strong>

"Happy birthday dear Claudia, happy birthday to me." She picked up her fork and dug into the ice cream cake in front of her. Chocolate, of course, and with chocolate icing. And big enough to feed four people, but while she did have a mini-fridge, she didn't have a mini-_freezer_, so she was just going to have to finish it off tonight.

That was okay, though. She only paid for one meal a day at Mrs. Richman's, covering breakfast and lunch for herself out of her mini-fridge and microwave, and tonight had been catfish. Yick. In the extreme. She'd picked at the brussel sprouts—also not among her favorite foods—and the rice on her plate and tried not to be insulting when Mrs. Richman asked her how she liked it, but she was more than ready for some real food.

She thought sometimes that she should leave this place. Maybe go to New York or Chicago or somewhere like that, where there was no chance of being seen by anyone who might recognize her from those years in foster care. But she'd never gotten around to actually doing it, aside from two-or-three day trips here and there. She'd called them business trips on the rare occasion that someone—usually Mrs. Richman—asked about them, but really they were 'see if somewhere else is better' trips. So far nothing had been; for better or worse this city was the closest thing to a home that she had. Besides, even if someone here _did_ happen to see her and happened to remember her name, there were only a few people who might have any idea about her age. And precious few of them would care.

She took another bite of cake and debated what to do with her evening. It was nasty outside tonight, rainy and cold, so she didn't have much of an urge to go out to a movie or anything like that. Besides, nothing good had come out recently. She should probably check the boards, see if there was anything promising looking job-wise, but, really, who wanted to go job-hunting on her birthday?

Her stint in 'legitimate' employment had been short lived—the cash registers at the consignment shop had been crap, but for some reason no one had appreciated it when she'd upgraded them, and waitresses who told their customers to just shut up and eat their food weren't in high demand even if said customers _were_ being really obnoxious—but she managed okay. Building and maintaining websites gave her enough to pay for her room and board without dipping into savings. At least not too much, most of the time. She'd do better if she could take bigger jobs, and it wasn't as if she didn't have the skills, but those required pesky things like credentials. And while she'd hacked herself a few, enough to satisfy the mom-and-pop type places, the big places required reference checks as well. Those she didn't have. Yet, anyway.

Maybe she could learn to drive. Well, not tonight, obviously, but she was now—legitimately, by everyone's count—sixteen and had the papers to prove it. Fake a parental signature, turn up at the drivers' license office, that might work. Driving couldn't be that hard.

She took a large bite of cake. Or maybe she'd get herself a guitar. She'd always thought that it would be fun to learn, and the walls here were thick enough to do so without disturbing her neighbors, but except for Shelly's husband way back when she'd first went into foster care she'd never fostered with anyone who'd even played, never mind offered to teach her.

She tapped her fork against her plate. What else did normal people do on their sixteenth birthdays? Have parties, probably, but... There were times when she saw some of the others at the boarding house, mostly students from the university, getting together to watch a movie or something and she was tempted to join them. But she already knew that she was pretty hopelessly awkward in social situations, and she really didn't want to hear about the goings-on at the university—or _anything_ about the university for that matter; it was pretty much the one place in the city that she made sure _not_ to visit—so it never happened. And most of the time she was fine with that. It was just holidays that were a little depressing.

She shook her head and licked her spoon clean. No, for her sixteenth birthday present to herself, she'd try driving, and if she didn't find herself having to pay for a totaled car, she'd get a guitar as well. Those would be far better presents than some random attempt to socialize anyway. Of course, she'd need a car for that…. Well, rental car places had websites. Websites could be hacked.

She glanced down and then hurried to take another bite of cake. It was melting a lot faster than she'd expected.


	13. She Was Seventeen

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. I'm __(potentially) __taking a few liberties with the location of Joshua's lab in this chapter, but if that was supposed to be a science building, it was the strangest one that I've ever seen. And also, if it was, I can't believe that any university would have let _that_ much lab space sit unused for ten years. No matter what happened there._

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><p><strong>She was seventeen, and coming here probably hadn't been the smartest thing that she'd ever done.<strong>

"_Joshua_!" Claudia gasped and shoved herself to her feet and then ended up flailing her arms for balance as she caught a foot on her backpack strap and nearly fell forward onto her face. But there was no sign of the disturbance that had awoken her. There was no one else around.

She shook her head as her common sense caught up with her. What was she thinking? Of course there was no one else around; she was in a _deserted_ building. And Joshua was gone. He had been for ten years now.

She knelt and opened her backpack, making sure that she hadn't stepped on her computer by accident, but it looked okay. With a shake of her head, she stood up again and slung her backpack over her shoulder, waving away some of the dust that her panicked reaction had raised. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you eat cold pizza at three in the morning." Well, actually lukewarm pizza...she knew she'd left it out on the counter for too long.

It was strange, though. Sure, she used to have nightmares about the day that Joshua had disappeared, but for the most part those had stopped years ago. And that second dream, the one that had felt so real—_looked_ so real, her dream mimicking this room exactly except for that blur of barely-visible light bouncing around—was definitely new.

She pulled her backpack around and dug out a can of coke. It was warm, which, gross, but she'd had worse, and she obviously wasn't fully awake yet if a stupid dream was still making her feel so uneasy.

Of course, being in this place probably wasn't helping either. She wasn't even sure why she'd come here, really. All of the buildings on their block were getting a roof repair this week, and since Claudia's room was on the top floor, Mrs. Richman had suggested that she spend a couple days with a friend. It had been a good idea, especially since Mrs. Richman had agreed not to charge her for the week, and Claudia had fully intended to get a motel room and call it a birthday vacation. But then she'd ended up passing by the campus this morning thanks to a change in the bus route—sure, she had a license now, but she didn't have a car, and, anyway, there were lunatics on the road—and for some reason she'd decided that getting off was a good idea. And now…well, here she was.

Even as she'd picked the padlock on the main door of the building and wondered why it was padlocked in the first place, she hadn't expected Joshua's lab to still be intact after all these years. Lab space was usually at a premium in research programs, something Joshua and his friends had complained about often enough, especially when Joshua and George had both gotten stuck in 'labs' in the old theater building. She could still remember Joshua saying that the building had the heating system from hell—well, heck, anyway—although Claudia had always thought that a heating system from hell would work way better. But even though hundreds of other grad students must have been through the university in the last decade, it had been obvious when she'd entered that the whole ex-theater was only being used for storage now. And some—most, even—of Joshua's old equipment was still in this room, tucked inside unlabeled cardboard boxes and hidden under dusty sheets.

She shook her head and took a step towards the door, only to stumble slightly as a wave of dizziness hit her. It passed as quickly as it had come, though, and she shook her head and kept walking. Lack of food, that probably wasn't helping her clear her head either. Well, it stood to reason that there was still a cafeteria on campus; she could grab something to eat there. Judging by the sunlight streaming in through the high windows, it had to be at least lunchtime by now. She'd forgotten her watch when she'd had to hurry out of her place ahead of the repairmen this morning—she'd been up so late coding that she'd slept through her alarm clock—so there was no way to say how long her nap had lasted...it wasn't like she'd _intended_ to fall asleep when she'd sat down against the wall to rest for a moment, but it had obviously been several hours.

She peered out of the small window beside the door for a few minutes before letting herself out of the building, making sure that the door locked again behind her. It didn't _look_ like anyone had been in there recently, and it wasn't like anyone was likely to be raiding old labs, but there was no sense being stupid about it.

"Dude, did you just come out of there?"

Claudia twisted to stare at the young woman that had apparently come out of nowhere. Or at least from around the side of the building that Claudia had thought was overgrown with brush.

"Man, you are either crazy brave, or just flat out crazy." She shook her head. "I mean, haven't you heard? That place is totally haunt—wait, _Claudia_? Damn, your hair went _red_."

Claudia had to stare at her for a moment longer before recognition set in. "Erica?" It had been years since she'd seen her old foster sister, but the woman's features were definitely familiar.

The woman grinned. "That's me. Long time no see. Do you go to school here too?" She shook her head. "I mean, I knew you were smart, but you must have skipped half of high school."

"I—no, no," Claudia shook her head quickly. She and Erica had been foster sisters for awhile; Erica was one of the few who really might remember her age. "I don't go to school here. Not yet, I mean. I'm just…checking it out. You know, for the future." She waved a hand. "I wasn't in there; the doors and stuff are all locked. I was just trying to look in the window. It's a cool looking building."

"Oh." Erica looked vaguely disappointed.

"Were you saying that the building is haunted?" Claudia asked, trying to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

"Yeah. I mean, I guess you wouldn't know since you don't go to school here yet, but some guy died there like ten years ago. Lab experiment gone wrong. The story is that now he haunts the place. Flickering lights in the windows, weird sounds, all that stuff."

"Really." Ten years ago meant Joshua—unless there had been two bizarre lab-experiment related deaths around that time, which, not likely—so Joshua was haunting the place? She'd liked Erica well enough way back when, but apparently she'd gone insane at some point in the past few years.

"I know, I know it sounds ten kinds of crazy, but that's the story. And everyone here knows it; some of the frats even make their pledges sneak in at midnight and steal something as part of their initiation."

Claudia shook her head. "And the fact that the building is haunted is the reason that no one uses it anymore? They really tell people that?"

"Well, no, of course that's not what anyone _says_. But, I mean, a boiler explosion? And some rich dude just _happens_ to up and die and leave money to the school for a new science building named in his honor at the same time? You've got to admit that it's just a little suspicious." She looked at the building for a moment and then turned back to Claudia. "So what are you thinking about majoring in if you do come here? I'm in the physical therapy program. Part time since I have to do that whole pesky pay-the-bills thing, but the Independent Living Program has a deal set up with the university for reduced tuition as long as participants keep their grades up, so…." She shrugged.

"Uh, computer science. I mean, probably." If she was actually planning to go to college, anyway. A new science building was actually a reasonable reason for them to start using the old theater for storage, in Claudia's opinion, but she didn't think that there was any point in bringing that up. "Look, I need to grab some food and then I'm meeting…someone…for a tour. Could you point me towards the cafeteria?"

"Sure, no problem." Erica turned to gesture down the street. "Just head down that way, and hang a right at the engineering building. You can't miss it; they still have all the banners out from the big recruiting drive this past weekend. The cafeteria is right beside the tennis courts."

"Thanks."

"And if you want a real student's look at campus life as opposed to the shiny version admissions is going to try to give you, give me a call." She pulled a piece of paper and a pencil out of her backpack and scribbled down a number. "I don't know what your current fosters are like, but I'd be happy to show you around if you can get away."

Claudia took it. "Thanks. Again."

"No problem. It was good to see you again."

* * *

><p>Claudia hugged her knees to her chest and scowled into the darkness. If she had any sense, she'd have gone straight to a motel after she'd eaten. Or hacked herself a ticket to a movie she hadn't seen, or checked out that new arcade down on fifth, or…well, gone pretty much anywhere but here. A deserted, apparently-haunted storage closet in the guise of a theater. With no heat, since the boiler really <em>had<em> exploded.

It was stupid. It really was. She'd hacked into the power company's records and confirmed that the theater had had a few electrical spikes over the years, the sort of thing that could cause lights to flash, but…well, it was an ancient building. Like seventy years old or something. That kind of thing happened. And according to maintenance records, the boiler had been original to the building so its demise hadn't really been a surprise either. But she'd had that dream—those dreams—and they still felt real, even now. And there _were_ records in the school paper of strange lights and noises coming from here, starting about ten years ago. Of course, those reports were always in the 'rumors' section and treated as a joke, and half of the people who reported them had probably been falling-down drunk, but….

She sighed again. Yet another good thing about coding as a career, she picked her own hours and did her work on her own time. If she wanted to be ridiculous and spend the night here just to prove to herself that there was nothing going on, it was all up to her. So she'd spend one night here, nothing would happen, and then she could get on with her life.


	14. She Was Eighteen

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. Feeling better now, thanks, and probably going to make two chapters beyond this one rather than just the one (since she's nineteen when they get Joshua back, and a chapter at the warehouse seems like a good place to end it)._

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><p><strong>She was eighteen and very possibly going insane.<strong>

Claudia checked her list one more time and tried very hard not to remember that normal people didn't do this. Normal people didn't dedicate an entire year to recreating ten-year-old lab experiments gone decidedly _wrong_. Especially to the point where it cut in on their actual lives and the work that they had to do to pay the bills.

She'd lost close to a dozen potential jobs—that she knew about—because she'd been too busy becoming an expert on seventeenth century science to notice the messages until it was too late. And she'd be the first to admit that some of her most recent website designs had been a little slapdash thanks to losing track of time and having to throw them together at the last minute. But since that night in Joshua's old lab, the dreams had kept coming. The back-when-it-happened dreams now happened pretty regularly no matter where she was, while the flash-of-white-light-that-feels-like-Joshua dreams, the ones that she wasn't so sure were really dreams anymore, only happened when she was at the lab, but both of them were seriously cutting in on her sleep at this point.

She sighed. She'd known that what she was planning was crazy from the moment that the idea had first occurred to her, but it hadn't stopped her then and it wasn't going to stop her now. Maybe she was insane—hell, at this point she was willing to admit that it was more likely 'probably' than 'maybe'—but it wasn't like it was hurting anyone. Excepting herself.

And as far as her list…well, it looked complete, and when she'd compared it with Joshua's notes—she'd waited until last to do that, in an attempt to keep from biasing herself—she hadn't seen anything in them that she wasn't accounting for. It was just that with everything referencing the compass, she had no way to know for sure. Well, she'd just have to go with what she had and hope it worked.

Of course, it might be a little difficult for her to _acquire_ some of the minerals she needed if they weren't already waiting for her in Joshua's lab…not quite 'steal plutonium' difficult, but not exactly a walk in the park either. Especially since she didn't want to keep raiding her savings. And she still had to find the parts to generate the necessary electrical field too. She kept forgetting about that part.

The bus came to a halt, and she shoved her list back into her backpack and ducked out the door. As far as she knew, her visits to the lab had all gone undetected, but then again, she usually used the side door and came and went after dark. Since she'd mostly been hauling stacks of books back to her apartment to read, it hadn't been necessary to use any lights except her flashlight. And while there were signs that the janitors entered the building occasionally—chairs and banners and other stuff taken in and out or moved around—they generally stuck to the main level where there weren't any stairs to navigate. Joshua's lab was safe enough.

Today was one of her rare daytime visits, though, since she needed to search the boxes and find out if Joshua already had the minerals and electronics necessary. Well, that and because Erica was hauling her out to celebrate her eighteenth birthday and 'freedom' tonight, even if she'd already been free for three years and eighteen wasn't legal enough to do anything fun anyway. Granted that according to the ID she acquired way back when she _was_ twenty-one now, but she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to test it.

She shook her head and took a careful look around to make sure no one was looking before slipping around the side of the building. The place was still creepy, even in daytime. There was really no other way to put it. All dusty and abandoned, and the fact that she'd been visiting for the past year hadn't changed that. There was no time to worry about that now, though, and she sighed and decided to start on one wall and work her way around. Even if the boxes Joshua's things had been stuck in weren't labeled, Joshua would have labeled any minerals himself, so….

Way too many hours later, Claudia sneezed, raised a hand to swipe at her nose, and then sneezed again as the dust on her hands tickled her nose. "Well, this is going nowhere."

She'd at least confirmed that there were the right parts available to build a field generator—it wouldn't even be hard—although the sure surge was going to be more than powerful to show up on the grid. Since it didn't look like anyone had done anything about the other electrical issues that the building had had, she wasn't too worried about that. Unfortunately, she'd also found a complete _lack_ of minerals. Apparently Joshua had been so focused on obtaining the compass itself that he hadn't looked at the individual components after all. Or if he had, they'd been among the few things taken out of the lab. Either way it was kind of weird, but regardless, it meant that she was going to have to find them herself. Exactly what she hadn't wanted to do; it meant that unless Santa Claus showed up, it was going to be several more months before she could recreate the experiment.

She sniffled again and then checked her watch absently. And then swore and snatched up her backpack and hurried out of the building because she'd apparently she'd forgotten to set the alarm, and she was supposed to be meeting Erica in the courtyard in about five minutes. Her original plan had been to finish up here in time to hit the gym—she'd hacked herself a student ID that let her use the facilities just for the sake of practicality—and grab a shower to get rid of the layer of dust and grime, but if she didn't hurry it, just wasn't going to happen. Fortunately the gym wasn't too far, and the water pressure in the showers could be turned up to 'sandblasting,' but…

"There you are. For a minute I thought you were going to flake out on us," Erica said with a grin as Claudia hurried back into the courtyard almost fifteen minutes later, dragging her fingers through still-wet hair. "That or your now-ex fosters were giving you a hard time."

Claudia shook her head. She'd passed off her current fosters—the non-existent ones—as 'you know, a little…' plus a shrug to cover why she was pretty much always available when Erica had something planned, and given that Erica had been in the system even longer than Claudia had, she'd never questioned it. "Nah, I'm out of there. I just lost track of time. Sorry."

"No worries. Come on, let's go get some dinner, and then we can head for Tim's. You haven't met him before, but he's having a party tonight and he said that we could bring friends."

"I saw him stocking up at the store, and it should be a good party," Tina agreed, and then frowned at Claudia. "Are you all right? You look a little pale."

"Oh. Yeah, I'm okay." Claudia shrugged. She was a redhead; she was always pale. "I just didn't get much sleep last night." She never got much sleep anymore. And now that she thought about it, she hadn't really eaten today either...she kept forgetting to go shopping so breakfast had been only had a granola bar, and she'd been too busy searching boxes to remember to stop for lunch.

"That's what you always say," Erica pointed out on the heels of Claudia's thought. "Maybe you should stop by the clinic, just in case. Just tell them you're a student. You look old enough, and they never ask for an ID. And unless they want you to visit a real doctor, it's only like ten bucks."

Given her reason for being tired, Claudia suspected that she needed a psychiatrist more than a health checkup, but she shrugged and nodded anyway. "Yeah, maybe I will. But not tonight." Because now that the idea of food had occurred to her, she was _hungry_. She gestured down the path, and the three of them fell into step. Originally Claudia had gotten in touch with Erica just to get as much information out of her about the 'haunted' theater as possible, but then they'd started hanging out, and…well, the whole 'friend' thing was kind of nice.

* * *

><p>Ow. Ow, ow, ow. The whole 'friend' thing was nice <em>most of the time<em>; that was a much better way to put it. Because Tim's punch—whatever had been in it—had been a bad idea, and she really wished that she hadn't agreed to help Erica finish off what was left in the pitcher. Oh, the first two glasses she'd had had been pretty good, but after that last glass-and-a-half she'd gotten really lightheaded, and now all she wanted was to curl up somewhere dark.

Claudia struggled far more than she should have with the lock to the theater building, finally managing to get in and make her way down the stairs. Slowly. She should probably be catching a bus back to her apartment right now, but she wasn't sure that the buses ran this late, and she wasn't really interested in moving at that kind of speed anyway. Granted that Joshua's lab wasn't the most _comfortable_ place in the world, but it was good enough.

She sank down slowly to the ground, putting her backpack behind her so she would have something to lay her head on. She'd left the party when most of the others had gotten too drunk to notice or care—although she'd had the sense to leave a note on Erica's jacket, just so she wouldn't worry—and now she was going to take a much-needed nap and hope that everything would be better tomorrow.

A wave of dizziness passed through her as she lay back, and for a moment she planned to blame it on her current inebriated state, but then a flash of white appeared and— "Oh, no. Not now."

She curled in on herself as it flashed around her, feeling it drain what little strength she still had and making her headache worse, and then something wet trickled down onto her lip that tasted suspiciously coppery. But the feeling of _presence_ was stronger now than it ever had been before too, and…. "Joshua?"

The flash of white didn't response, of course, dissipating again a moment later, and she wondered idly if she should go report it to the campus paper. After all, she was drunk enough for it to go in the 'rumors' section with all the other reports, now. But…. She shook her head. As completely and totally insane as it still sounded—as completely and totally insane as it probably _was_—she would _swear_ that that had been Joshua. She just had to find a way to confirm it.

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><p><em>Author's NoteGeneral PSA—Drinking mixed drinks at a party without knowing exactly who mixed them and what is in them is generally not a good idea._


	15. She Was Nineteen

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. _

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><p><strong>She was nineteen, and she was going to get her brother back.<strong>

So, it turned out that she wasn't insane. Which, always good to know, but figuring it out had taken four months, and it had been four months that she really hadn't had to spare.

After spending months gathering the minerals to recreate Joshua's experiment, of making sure that she had everything perfect, her first attempt had failed incredibly spectacularly. Well, actually it had failed incredibly _un_-spectacularly: lights, camera, nothing. At which point she'd decided that she really was crazy and checked herself into the local mental hospital. Her time there had actually helped her _physical_ health since they had all these picky rules about people eating regularly and sleeping normal hours, even if they did check in of their own accord, but as far as her mental health….

No matter what any of the doctors had tried, the dreams hadn't stopped. In fact, they'd only become even more intense as time passed, and although she'd been diagnosed with one thing after another, put her on one medication after another, none of it had done anything useful. Made her sick to her stomach for hours a day, yes. Several times, in fact, although she generally started refusing those pills if there was no change after the first couple days. Given her headaches that made her wish they'd just drill holes in her skull and have it done with, also yes. Those pills she started refusing after the first couple _hours_. But again, it hadn't helped, and the few times she'd allowed them to try 'alternative' treatments in lieu of medication…well, the less said about that, the better. Even the counseling had only frustrated her. It had been like way back when when she'd first gone into foster care and she'd had to go talk to Dr. Whatever-his-name-had-been every other week, and he'd pretty much patted her on the head and hadn't listened at all when she'd said that her brother had disappeared in a flash of light.

A couple weeks ago, she'd finally had enough and checked herself out. She'd been going against medical advice when she'd done so, but they hadn't been able to claim that she was a danger to anyone so they'd had no excuse to keep her around. And just like that, she was back in the middle of her old life. Mrs. Richman had held her room since she'd kept up on the rent payments, and while Joshua's old lab had acquired a new layer of dust, none of her things there had been disturbed either. At least not until another white-light episode had happened and she'd sent part of her electric field generator crashing to the floor. It had been shock more than weakness that had caused the accident, though, because that this time, instead of just being white light flashing around, it had been Joshua. For sure Joshua, trapped, somehow, but still _him_, and she'd known in that instant that she absolutely had to figure out how to recreate his experiment—_correctly_ this time—and get him out of there.

Except she had no idea how to do that because she still didn't know where she'd gone wrong the first time. Her independent notes on Rheticus' work mirrored Joshua's, she'd calculated the strength of the electric field down almost full order of magnitude _past_ anything Joshua had done, she'd recreated the whole thing down to the very last mineral….

She thumped her hands against her bedspread and then stood up, crossing her arms over her chest as she glared at the newest addition to her apartment: a large world map pinned to the wall. There was someone who _should_ know—or at least might have an idea—though, if she could just find him. Professor Call-Me-Artie who'd come to talk to Joshua about grants. Who'd _known_ that there was something going on with the compass even before everything had gone wrong.

She'd figured that finding him would be easy. Granted that she didn't remember Joshua saying anything about which university or lab or whatever that he'd been coming from and that the only notation in Joshua's notebook had been a scribbled line on the last page, "Sun, 12:30, Professor Nielson re. grant application," but professors were professors, and there should be contact info available with his publications. An email address, if nothing else, and once she had that she knew that she could find him. Except that he didn't seem to have any publications. .

It shouldn't be possible, not given the whole publish or perish culture in academia, but as far as she could tell, there were no Arthur Nielsons involved in the field of physics at all. At first she'd thought that he might have died or something—he had been kind of old—but literature searches from ten and twenty years ago hadn't turned up anything either. In fact, even literature searches going back through forty and fifty year old journals, which she'd checked on the off chance that he'd gone straight from school to some super-secret private lab, hadn't returned anything. She'd even tried a few variations Nielson, just in case Joshua had accidentally misspelled his name, but were no Arthur Nielsans, Arthur Nielsuns, or Arthur Neilsons either. There were a few Arthur _Nelsons_, but she'd been able to rule all of them out from photos.

In fact, so far the only place that a potentially useful Nielson had turned up was in a police report on an unguarded server that a generic search for 'Nielson'—just in case Artie was somehow short for something besides Arthur—had turned up. She hadn't set up the search parameters correctly but she hadn't realized it until the search had filled up her entire hard drive, and she'd shut it down and been about to mass-delete all the results in order to try again with the _right_ parameters when a listing for a 'Dr. Arthur Nielson' had jumped out at her. There was no photo associated with the police report, so no way to know for sure, but he'd been listed as a witness in some kind of bizarre explosion at a box factory up north, and the vital stats looked about right. Well, she remembered him being taller than what was listed, but then, she'd been seven at the time. All adults had looked like giants.

The only thing she could think of to do at this point was to run another mass search and hope for another accidental sighting, but she was going to have to pick up another hard drive—or two, or three—first, just to handle the results. And she had to finish the webpage for Millie's Bakery tonight if she wanted to get paid by the time rent was due, and….

She groaned and threw herself back down on her bed. Webpage first. Then food. She wouldn't be back on the meal plan at Mrs. Richman's until the first of next month, but if she picked the right restaurant and told them it was her birthday, she _might_ be able to get a free piece of cake out of it. Then she'd check online and see what she could find for cheap hard drives. And then she was going to get some sleep because tomorrow she had a lot of leg—or at least eye—work to do. If she could find _one_ good picture of him it would be great, just because then she could use photo-matching software to help filter out useless results, but until she had that picture she was going to have to do a lot of the work manually.

Her computer beeped, and she rolled over with another groan. Mrs. Edgeman probably wanted an update on the status of said webpage, and there was only so many variations on 'I'm working on it' that—"Professor Reynolds?"

She sat up quickly and pulled her computer over to her, double-checking the name in the address field. Professor Reynolds had been one of Joshua's physics professors back in school. Not his primary advisor, that had been Dr. Eriksson, but he'd helped Joshua find Rheticus' compass in the first place. He'd contacted her once, back during her search for the minerals…his email had said something about seeing her name on one of the message boards or something like that, as she recalled. She hadn't remembered seeing _him_ on the boards, but then again, she hadn't been noticing much of anything that hadn't related directly to her search back then, and at the time, she'd friended him, messaged him back to ask a couple questions about the minerals she was searching for, and then forgotten all about it when his reply hadn't said anything that she hadn't already known.

She scanned the new message quickly. Just general pleasantries, for the most part: how was she, had she been able to track down everything she needed for her experiment, had her experiment gone well, that kind of thing. But there was also the 'Please, let me know if there's anything I can do to help,' line at the end, and he had worked in the physics department and helped with the compass search. Even if he was out of academia now, as his first message had indicated, maybe he knew something about Call-Me-Artie and his grant offer. Like exactly where he'd come from with that grant offer or even where he might be now. She thought for a moment about the best way to frame her question and then began to type quickly.


	16. She Was Twenty

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed, especially those who have stuck with it since the beginning. This is the last chapter (which is why it took me so long to decide how I wanted to end it), so I hope everyone enjoyed._

_I did get a question about Claudia checking herself into a mental institution in the last chapter…according to Myka and Pete's research in _Claudia,_ that is what she did. Which, since people aren't generally grabbed off the street and institutionalized, seems reasonable._

* * *

><p><strong>She was twenty, and she had people to spend her birthday with.<strong>

"Claudia, what's taking you so long? I need you to—"

"La la la, I can't hear you!" Claudia interrupted, scowling the general direction of the voice. She _would_ have people to spend her birthday with if her boss would let her _out_ of here, anyway. But no, couldn't have that. In fact, Artie had had her running around all day: rewiring the autovac, moving three of her inter-warehouse terminals for 'ease of access' purposes, doing inventory on the kitchenware isles—seriously, there were multiple kitchenware isles, and for some reason Artie seemed to think that they all needed to be inventoried _now_—and there was a mostly-illegible post-it up in the office instructing her to either defragment or set fire to his computer. Why he couldn't do whichever it was himself, she didn't know. And granted that setting fire to it would be doing the world a favor given that it was like five years old, but that would make a mess, and Artie would make her clean it up, and the last thing she needed was yet another thing to do.

"Aren't you done yet?" Artie demanded, coming around the corner scowling. "You've had five hours. And I found Fernand Point's fork hanging half off its shelf. Do you _know_ what could have happened?"

"Point's fork? Seriously?" She shook her head and flicked the nearest identification card—paper; this aisle hadn't been updated with screens yet which meant that that was probably next on her never-ending list of things to get to—and then turned to face him. "Isn't it time to go back to Leena's?"

"I don't—"

"You let Pete and Myka leave over an hour ago."

"I'm still here."

"A, you're my ride, as scary as that is, so you have to still be here, and B, you'd live here if you could. Come _on_, Artie, I want my chocolate cake!"

"I—what—how did you know about that? It was supposed to be a surprise!" He scowled. "Did Pete tell you?"

"What? No." Although it was a little surprising that he hadn't said anything, now that she thought about it. The only 'happy birthday' she'd gotten thus far had been in a short email from Erica. "Dude, today is my birthday, and I was at the store with Leena when she was buying the ingredients. It's not really rocket science."

He still looked unhappy, and she shook her head. "So now that it's not a surprise, can you stop trying to…distract me…or whatever it is you've been doing all day? After all, you can still surprise me with your present." She paused. "You did get me a present, right?"

Artie heaved a sigh and then turned. "Well, I guess we might as well get back to the B and B then. But make sure that you pick up right where you left off tomorrow. And put in an order for new screens, too. I know we don't have enough in stock to do this entire aisle."

Claudia sighed. She was a freaking mind reader sometimes. "Okay, okay, but right now, let's go."

He fished his keys out of his pocket and held them out. "Go start the car; I need to get a few things from my office."

Leena, who Claudia sometimes suspected actually _was_ a mind reader, was calling the others down for dinner just as she and Artie entered, and Claudia threw her jacket aside, ignored Artie's complaint that she could at least hang it up, and headed for the table.

Leena had outdone herself with the chicken pot pie, and Claudia grinned when Pete pinned her in her seat afterwards as Myka and Leena cleared the table. Artie unpacked his computer—Claudia hadn't even realized that he'd brought it home with him—and Joshua's sleepy face appeared on the screen just as the two women returned, Leena carrying a cake.

"Happy birthday to you," Myka and Leena began.

"Happy birthday to you," Pete and Joshua joined in. "Happy birthday, dear Claudia, happy birthday to you."

"Artie, you weren't singing," Myka hissed at him as they finished and Leena set the cake down in front of Claudia.

"I _don't_ sing."

"Well, that's true," Claudia agreed with a grin. "I heard you in the shower yesterday, and I totally thought that Leena was killing the cow for dinner herself."

"You do realize that I can have you doing inventory for the rest of your life?" Artie threatened.

"And that would that be unusual how?"

Joshua interrupted before Artie could respond, obviously fighting down a yawn. "Happy birthday, Claude, but I really have to get some sleep. We have a big presentation for potential new investors tomorrow, and if I fall asleep halfway through, Dr. LeFevre will murder me. Enjoy your party. And I _swear_ that your present will be there by next week. I forgot how long international shipping can take."

She grinned. Usually they talked in the mornings because that worked best with the time difference; she was surprised that he'd stayed up this late just to sing her Happy Birthday. "No worries. Good luck with your presentation, and I'll talk to you again soon. Love you."

"Love you too. And thanks, I'll need it." He reached out, and the screen went blank a moment later.

"Hurry and blow out your candles," Pete said, nudging the cake closer to her as Artie moved his computer off the table. "Before all the wax drips down on the frosting. Here, I'll help."

"You will not." Myka tugged at his arm, pulling him backwards. "It's her birthday."

Claudia took a deep breath and blew, managing to get most of them. At least for a moment, and then they sputtered back to life. "What—are these _artifact_ candles?"

"No, no, just re-lighting," Pete said, holding up his hands as Artie spun on him. "You haven't seen them before?"

She hadn't had a real birthday cake in a couple years, and the ones her foster parents used to pick out had mostly come from supermarket bakeries with a pack of standard candles, taped on top. So no. She shrugged, making another attempt to blow out the candles, only to meet with the same results. "Maybe if we dunk them in water before they light up again, that'll keep them out." Because otherwise she wasn't sure how they were going to get to her cake.

Leena went for a glass of water, and between the five of them, the cake was de-candled on short order.

"Pete, keep your fingers out of the frosting!" Myka exclaimed as they finished.

"What? I was just getting the last candle out."

"By scraping off an entire frosting flower with it?"

Claudia grinned as Pete licked his lips rather than responding. "You know, you're three candles short."

"What do you mean?" Leena frowned at Artie. "You told me that she was twenty."

"She is." He paused, turning to look at her. "Wait, aren't you?"

"My ID says I'm twenty-three." At least the one she'd acquired in high school did, although it was about to hit its fake expiration date. Her real, legal driver's license did say twenty.

"What ID?" Artie asked with a frown.

Oops. Maybe a fake ID wasn't an appropriate thing to mention in front of two Secret Service agents and…well, technically Artie was a Secret Service agent too, but he was also kind of…. She shook her head quickly. "Nothing. Never mind. It's time to eat the cake, now, right?"

Judging by Artie's expression, she was going to hear about IDs again in the future, but Leena's near-magical production of ice cream and plates a moment later neatly distracted everyone. Presents appeared as they finished their cake—and Pete stole Myka's discarded icing—and Claudia grinned at the pile. She hadn't had presents that she hadn't bought for herself in years either.

Pete's, wrapped in the brightly-colored cartoon character paper, were easy enough to pick out, and she grinned as she unwrapped three new DVDs. All comedy, judging by the descriptions, and two of which she hadn't seen before. "Wicked. Movie night tonight?"

"Heck yeah. After all, we've still got half a cake to finish."

Myka's present was as easily identifiable by the precise wrapping job as Pete's were by the paper, and Claudia grinned as she unwrapped a new mp3 player.

"I know that your old one broke, and I figured that you needed a new one for when you were doing inventory," Myka said with a quick smile.

"No. No, no, no, not in the Warehouse." Artie shook his head quickly. "I've told you this before a hundred times; you have to be _totally_ focused on what you're doing or…things…will sneak up on you."

"So I'll install a rearview mirror." Most of the time she couldn't totally focus on only one thing anyway. And this player was way nicer than her old one had been. "Thanks, Myka."

Leena had obviously coordinated with Myka because she gave Claudia a gift card for an online music store—Claudia was fine getting her music the illegal way, but they did sell guitar picks and some other stuff too—and a much nicer set of headphones than the ones that came with the player.

Artie's idea of giving a present was shoving it at her while muttering under his breath, and Claudia frowned as she tore at the paper. "You do know that the point of the tape is to hold the wrapping closed, not to laminate it in place, right?"

That got an eye roll, and Pete was starting to pull out his pocket knife when she finally managed to tear the paper away and pry the small box inside free. In it was a pendant with matching bracelets and earrings, and she pulled out the pendant to look at it more closely. She didn't know what kind of stone it was, but it looked really cool.

"It's…." Artie cleared his throat awkwardly. "I mean, people—girls—women—like jewelry. Right?"

Artie was kind of hopeless and old sometimes, but she liked her present, and Claudia grinned and fastened the pendant on quickly. "It's great. Thanks." It looked like she was going to have to take a few links out of the bracelets before she could wear them without risking losing them, but she could do that tomorrow and switch out her earrings then as well.

"All right, movie time," Pete announced as Claudia shut the box again carefully. "Everybody come on. And bring the cake."

Myka started to clean up the wrapping that littered the table, but Leena waved her aside with the assurance that they could do it later. Which sounded just fine to Claudia, and she took the rest of her presents up to her room before heading back to join the others around the television. Only to find that they'd commandeered all the cushioned surfaces. Well, technically there was a spot between Pete and Myka on the couch since Artie and Leena had taken the chairs, but given Pete's habit of irritating Myka in the middle of movies and Myka's habit of retaliating with some form of violence, it wasn't a spot that Claudia wanted to take. She flopped down on the floor instead, tucking an arm under her head.

"Hey, hey, hey, no lying down until you put the movie in," Pete protested.

Claudia rolled her eyes and grabbed the top DVD, shoving it into the player. "Just don't eat all my cake before I get a second slice."

"What cake? I don't see any ca—ow! Myka! You're mean."

"Children, please," Artie said before Myka could respond. "Claudia, if you're going to lie down there, at least use a pillow. Here."

Claudia took the one he offered with a quick smile, scooting back into place as the previews began to roll. When she'd first started searching for Artie, all of her thoughts had been centered on getting Joshua back. She'd never really thought about what might happen after. Most days it hadn't even really occurred to her that there would _be_ an after. But while she could do without Joshua being all the way in _Switzerland_, it wasn't like she never got to see him or talk to him. And all things considered, being here with Artie and Myka and Pete and Leena…. She glanced back at the four of them quickly. It was pretty great. Home.


End file.
